The present invention relates to a metal/plastic composite front panel for a motor vehicle.
Such a panel is a structural element of the vehicle capable of incorporating various items of equipment of the vehicle such as headlamps, direction indicators, horn, heat exchanger, electric fan unit or entire cooling module, etc.
The front panel, provided in this manner with these items of equipment, forms a single-unit assembly prepared and delivered by the equipment supplier, which is ready to be mounted on the vehicle by the manufacturer.
The mounting of this module is performed by connection to lateral structural elements of the vehicle such as side members, wings or body-frame, then positioning a bumper or a front shield mounted on the module.
As a panel structure which is made entirely of plastic material does not enable the safety requirements of crash tests to be complied with, for the structure of the front panel it is necessary to combine elements made of plastic material (for lightness and low manufacturing cost) and metal elements (for mechanical strength). The method that is currently used consists in deep-drawing a metal sheet to form a section which is then mounted on a plastic support by screwing or rivetting fixing sleeves.
One of the drawbacks of this method is an increase in the weight of the front panel, owing to the double thickness of metal+plastic at the level of the metal reinforcing section.
Moreover, the assembly of the reinforcing section by screwing or rivetting accordingly adversely affects the manufacturing cost of the panel.